Charles Darwin Read online

  First published in Great Britain by

  PEN AND SWORD DISCOVERY

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  Copyright © Andrew Norman, 2013

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  Contents

  Darwin/Wedgwood Family Tree

  Acknowledgements

  Maps

  Preface

  Chapter 1 Charles Darwin: A Child is Born

  Chapter 2 Religion: Unitarianism

  Chapter 3 Shrewsbury School and the Reverend Butler

  Chapter 4 Edinburgh

  Chapter 5 Cambridge

  Chapter 6 John Locke and William Paley

  Chapter 7 A Proposition

  Chapter 8 The Voyage of HMS Beagle

  Chapter 9 The Galapagos

  Chapter 10 Home at Last

  Chapter 11 Thomas Robert Malthus

  Chapter 12 Romance: Marriage: Darwin’s Theory Takes Shape

  Chapter 13 A Rival Appears on the Scene: Darwin’s Hand is Forced

  Chapter 14 Labor Omnia Vincit

  Chapter 15 The Origin of Species

  Chapter 16 The Great Oxford Debate

  Chapter 17 Aftermath of the Great Debate

  Chapter 18 Alfred Russel Wallace

  Chapter 19 Variation: The Theory of Pangenesis

  Chapter 20 Sir Francis Galton

  Chapter 21 The Descent of Man

  Chapter 22 Darwin and Freedom of Thought

  Chapter 23 Erasmus Darwin

  Chapter 24 Lamarck

  Chapter 25 Patrick Matthew

  Chapter 26 William Charles Wells

  Chapter 27 Darwin’s Chronic Illness: Dr James M. Gully

  Chapter 28 Darwin’s Continuing Ill-Health: Possible Causes

  Chapter 29 Dr Ralph Colp: Professor Saul Adler: Chagas’ Disease

  Chapter 30 Darwin, Emma, and God

  Chapter 31 Religions: Their Creation and Evolution

  Chapter 32 The Dinosaurs

  Chapter 33 Birds: The Only Surviving Dinosaurs

  Chapter 34 The Eugenics Debate

  Chapter 35 Major Leonard Darwin

  Chapter 36 Social Darwinism: The Deliberate Misrepresentation of Darwin’s Ideas: The Nazi Holocaust

  Chapter 37 Why Superstition may be Preferable to Reason?

  Chapter 38 The Ingrained Nature of False Beliefs

  Chapter 39 Genetic Science Vindicates Darwin and Provides an Explanation for Variation

  Chapter 40 Darwin and Downe’s Church of St Mary the Virgin

  Chapter 41 The Darwin Children

  Chapter 42 The Final Decade

  Epilogue

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  Appendix III

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  AK Bell Library, Perth, Scotland; British Library; Darwin Correspondence Project, Cambridge University Library; Dundee Central Library, Local History Centre; Plymouth University, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Plymouth, UK; Linnean Society of London; Natural History Museum; Perth and Kinross Council Archive; Perth Museum & Art Gallery; Poole Postgraduate Library; Poole Central Library; Royal Society, London; School of Geography, Scientific Manuscripts Collections, Department of Manuscripts & University Archives, University Library, Cambridge; South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, London; Special Collections, Centre for Research Collections, Edinburgh University Library; United Benefice of Cudham and Downe; Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff.

  Paul Adair; Rupert Baker, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen; Yvonne Bell; Catherine Broad; Claire Button; Professor Anthony K. Campbell; Anne Carroll; Elaine Charwat; Rosemary Clarkson; Mary Clayton; Professor Barbara Doughty; Hugh Dower; Gabriel Dragffy; Nicholas Dragffy; Stuart Hannabuss; Ellen King; Rhona Morrison; Barbara Pierce; Dr Toni Soriano Arandes; Adam J. Perkins; Gregory D. Price; the Reverend Cliff Reed; Nigel J. Savery; Angela Stone; Deirdre Sweeney; John Watson.

  I am especially grateful to my beloved wife, Rachel, for all her help and encouragement.

  Plan of Down House and its grounds.

  Places visited by HMS Beagle, on her voyage 1831–36.

  Geographical distribution of Chagas disease vectors in Latin America. (Source: PAHO/WHO, Programme on Communicable Diseases)

  Preface

  Charles Darwin did not deliberately set out to be the ‘destroyer of mythical beliefs’, some of which, in his early days as a young Christian, he had previously espoused. He was a modest man who liked to avoid controversy of any kind, yet paradoxically, he was to be the cause of the greatest controversy in the history of the world! Neither did he quickly come to his conclusions about the origin and evolution of all life on Earth, for just as the living organisms to which his theory applied had evolved over millions of years, so his thinking evolved as his own life progressed.

  Darwin was the scientific equivalent of ‘Mr Valiant-for-truth’, a character in writer and preacher the Reverend John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress – a religious allegory, representing the Christian journey from a sinful condition to redemption. Like ‘Mr Valiant-for-truth’ Darwin was to endure great hardships – ‘persecution’ might not be too strong a word on account of his beliefs. However, Darwin’s journey was not a pilgrimage to the ‘Celestial City’, but one of scientific discovery.

  When, in late December 1831, Darwin embarked on HMS Beagle, bound for the southern hemisphere, he could not have imagined that the experience would lead him to formulate a theory which would totally revolutionize the way in which man viewed the natural world. And yet, although Darwin’s theory explains so much, it leaves many questions unanswered. Some relate to Darwin himself: in particular the nature of the chronic illness which plagued him all his adult life. Others relate to such questions as why did the dinosaurs become extinct; was it possible to resolve the apparent incompatibility of ‘Darwinism’ and science; to what extent was Darwinism a factor in the Nazi ‘Holocaust’? Finally, come questions which penetrate to the very heart of what it means to be a human being.

  Chapter 1

  Charles Darwin: A Child is Born
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br />   Charles Robert Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 at ‘The Mount’ (a mansion built by his father Dr Robert Darwin, in 1798) in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire. Constructed of red brick in the late Georgian style, ‘The Mount’ reflected the fact that its owner was a man of substance. It was subsequently described as containing:

  Dining Room, Drawing Room, Morning Room opening into Conservatory, Library, Fourteen Bedrooms with suitable Dressing Rooms, Kitchens and all usual offices, ample Cellaring, very extensive Stabling, Coach Houses, &c., Conservatories, Fernery, Forcing Frames, extensive walled Garden, Pleasure Grounds, and adjoining piece of Land …, and standing in an elevated position on the Banks of the River Severn, commanding [views of] extensive and beautiful scenery. The property also included a Gardener’s House with Garden attached, Coach-house, Stable, &c.

  The luxuriousness of life at ‘The Mount’ is further indicated by the presence of a parterre, a summerhouse, and an ice house (a building, typically one situated partly or wholly underground, in which food was preserved by storing it in ice).1

  Darwin had an older brother, Erasmus Alvey (born 1804), and four sisters: Marianne (born 1798), Caroline Sarah (born 1800), Susan Elizabeth (born 1803), and (Emily) Catherine (born 1810). During his boyhood his siblings called him ‘Bobby’, or alternatively, ‘Charley’, and subsequent correspondence reveals that a strong and loving bond existed between them all.

  His father Robert

  Darwin’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, was born on 30 May 1766. He attended Leiden University in the Netherlands where, following in the footsteps of his father, Erasmus, he qualified as a doctor.2 He subsequently established a ‘very large [medical] practice’ in Shrewsbury.3 In 1788, following the publication in the scientific journal Philosophical Transactions (of the Royal Society) of a learned paper entitled ‘Ocular Spectra’, Robert was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

  On 18 April 1796, Robert married Susannah, daughter of his father Erasmus’s late friend, the famous Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood (I).4

  At ‘The Mount’, Robert ‘took a great pleasure in his garden, planting it with ornamental trees and shrubs, and being especially successful in fruit-trees … .’5 Darwin described his father as ‘the kindest man I ever knew … .’6

  His mother Susannah Darwin, née Wedgwood

  Susannah came from a family whose religious persuasion was Unitarian (see below). She attended the Reverend George Case’s Unitarian chapel (situated in Shrewsbury’s High Street), as did Darwin and his siblings.7 Said Darwin,

  My mother died in July 1817, when I was a little over eight years old, and it is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table.8

  Dr Case and Shrewsbury Unitarian School

  Apart from his ministerial duties, the Reverend Case also ran a day school in Shrewsbury that Darwin attended, the latter describing himself at this time as a collector of

  all sorts of things: shells [of marine molluscs], seals [presumably for stamping designs on documents], franks [presumably for stamping letters with official marks to record payment of postage], coins, and minerals.9

  Darwin also reveals that he was ‘interested at this early age in the variability of plants [i.e. in respect of their colours]’.10 He made minute observations in regard to the variability of species – both plants and animals – and as a result of the deductions which he made, based upon such observations, he would one day become famous throughout the world.

  Darwin confessed that, as a child, he had a penchant for telling white lies and for performing practical jokes.

  I once gathered much valuable fruit from my father’s trees and hid it in the shrubbery and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit.

  [However] father wisely treated this tendency not by making crimes of the fibs, but by making light of the discoveries.11

  Darwin also described how, on one occasion, he ‘acted cruelly for I beat a puppy …’. He then proceeds to analyse his emotions. Yes, he had enjoyed his ‘sense of power’ over the puppy, but nonetheless, ‘this act lay heavily on my conscience, as is shown by my remembering the exact spot where the crime was committed’.12

  NOTES

  1. Mansion House, called ‘The Mount’, Shrewsbury: Particulars of Sale By Auction, 1867. From Boyd, P. D. A., 1999, Darwin Garden Project, Shropshire Parks and Gardens Trust Newsletter.

  2. Darwin, Francis, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, Volume I, p.19.

  3. Darwin, Charles, The Life of Erasmus Darwin, p.85.

  4. Darwin, Francis, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, Volume I, p.19.

  5. Ibid, p.20.

  6. Darwin, Francis, Autobiography of Charles Darwin, p.7.

  7. Ibid, p.2, note 1.

  8. Ibid, p.12.

  9. Ibid, pp.2–3.

  10. Ibid, p.3.

  11. Ibid, p.3 and note 2.

  12. Ibid, p.5.

  Chapter 2

  Religion: Unitarianism

  Unitarianism is a so-called ‘non-conformist’ or ‘dissenting’ religion, which originated in Transylvania – now part of Romania – in the sixteenth century, and a Unitarian is defined as a person, especially a Christian, who asserts the unity of God and rejects the doctrine of the Trinity (the three persons of the Christian Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).1

  In England, Unitarian ideas were first expounded by John Biddle (1615–62), graduate and tutor of Magdalen Hall, Oxford and in 1774 Britain’s first Unitarian congregation was established by the former Anglican clergyman Theophilus Lindsey in Essex Street, Strand, London. (Anglican – relating to or denoting the Church of England, or any Church in communion with it.)2

  As members of a ‘dissenting’ religion Unitarians were liable to be ostracized for their beliefs and persecuted, and it was not until 1813 (with the repeal of certain clauses of the Toleration Act) that Unitarianism finally became a legalized form of worship.

  To Unitarians Jesus Christ is not God (i.e. part of the Trinity) but rather ‘a man, unequivocally human [who was] conceived and born in the usual human manner’.3 God is therefore regarded by Unitarians as a ‘unity’, rather than a ‘trinity’ – hence the name ‘Unitarian’. Unitarians also believe that following Christ’s crucifixion, he did not descend into ‘Hell’; for in Unitarianism, there is no such place. Neither is there such an entity as ‘The Devil’, and nor do they subscribe to the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’. As for the ‘Resurrection of Christ’ from the dead – this is to be seen, not as a literal truth, but rather as a ‘powerful myth’;4 and as for the notion of there being life after death ‘most Unitarians agree that this is an area of mystery’.5 To summarize

  Unitarians believe that freedom from prescribed creeds, dogma and confessions of faith is necessary if people are to seek and find truth for themselves. Shared values and a shared religious approach are a surer basis for unity than theological propositions. Because no human being and no human institution can have a monopoly of truth, it is safer to admit that from the outset. The Unitarian community is a community of the spirit that cherishes reason and acknowledges honest doubt; a community where the only theological test is that required by one’s own conscience. Above all, Unitarians are bound by a sense of common humanity.6

  Finally, Unitarians, who regard both the Bible and the Church as fallible, believe that for every individual, the seat of religious authority lies ‘within oneself’, and that ‘all people develop their own belief system’.

  Most importantly for the young Charles Darwin was the attitude of Unitarians to science, summed up by Unitarian minister and theologian James Martineau, Minister of Little Portland Street Chapel, London (1858–72) and Principal of Manchester New (Unitarian) College (1869–85), who declared that ‘the architects of science have raised over us a nobler temple…’.7 />
  Given the fact that, from an early age, Charles Darwin was passionately interested in the natural world and natural history (defined as the scientific study of the natural world, including animals and plants, palaeontology, and other natural phenomena which are the subject of scientific investigation) it was fortunate for him that the Unitarian environment (provided for him by his Unitarian chapel, Unitarian school, and Unitarian mother) was ‘science friendly’. This situation, however, was now to change, for it was said of Darwin that ‘after his early boyhood, he seems usually to have gone to church and not to Mr Case’s [chapel].8 This was a reference to Shrewsbury’s Anglican Church of St Chad, where Darwin had been baptized in November 1809.

  Robert Darwin was a ‘freethinker’ – one who rejects accepted opinions, especially those concerning religious belief. (Robert’s father Erasmus, had also been sceptical about religion, declaring that ‘Unitarianism was a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian’,9 by which he meant, presumably, that for those who had doubts about the truth of Christianity, or found it impossible to follow its tenets, there was always Unitarianism to fall back on.)

  It appears, therefore, that after the death of Darwin’s Unitarian mother Susannah, Robert made the decision to transfer his son (and presumably his other children) to the established Church of England. This was probably because Robert, who had ambitions for his two sons, knew that as Unitarian ‘dissenters’ they would face hostility and prejudice in society, which might well prove to be a hindrance to them.

  NOTES

  1. Oxford Dictionaries Online.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Reed, the Reverend Clifford M., Unitarian? What’s that? Para 12.

  4. Reed, the Reverend Clifford M., Beatrix Potter’s Unitarian Context, p.5.

  5. Ibid, p.9.

  6. Reed, the Reverend Clifford M., Unitarian? What’s that? Para 38.

  7. Martineau, James, A Seat of Authority in Religion, 1890, in James Martineau: Selections, p.47.

  8. Darwin, Francis, Autobiography of Charles Darwin, p.2, note 1.